Possession—Flash Fiction
Archibald Curry had coveted the statue since first he saw it, the woman’s beautiful face tipped low behind translucent folds of marble. He decided immediately to own it—the original, not some tacky fake peddled to the uneducated masses—his determination only deepened by the knowledge the lovely lady was currently possessed by the Michaels brothers, two of the most undeserving twits ever to grace the cover of Fortune Magazine.
For seventeen years, Archibald chased wealth, collecting money like the Michaels collected women. He spent not a penny. To the outside observer, he appeared a pauper. Only he and his accountant knew his true worth, his face no more likely to appear on the cover of a money magazine than the face of the clerk who bagged his groceries each week.
So when the bust finally came to auction (the Michaels brothers forced to liquidate their entire estate following a series of strange events that surprised and scandalized everyone except Archibald—he, of course, knew they were just the sort of men to invite calamity upon themselves), a mysterious bidder who insisted upon absolute anonymity scooped her up and whisked her away, the statue’s destination as secret at her new owner—one Archibald Curry.
She summoned him now in the moonlight—and, really, her beauty could only be appreciated in the midnight glow, the ripples of her stone veil appearing to undulate gently in the breeze that puckered Archibald’s skin.
That’s strange, he thought, observing the stillness of the trees outside, the windows pulled tight against the winter chill. From where had the breeze come? Archibald returned his eyes to the lady, to her face which appeared, suddenly, to have tipped itself upward, her eyes glowing with life. It seemed to him as if she were studying him as he was studying her.
And then those curious white eyes blinked.
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